


survive.

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Series: Narnia Musings [48]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22897279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: The world pays no mind to this iron dripping from you, pooling at your seams. It pays no mind to these voices all pulling at you, peering through your every crack, fumbling at all your scars, peeling all this make up from you until you’re blotched red and rubbed raw; and still.Like this, they cast you in stone.Pretty, crying, heaving thing, you hollow Queen, they drape you in flowers and cloth smooth as water, pour water all over you until all the English has seeped from your hair; until it’s left curling and standing on edge.
Relationships: Edmund Pevensie & Lucy Pevensie & Peter Pevensie & Susan Pevensie
Series: Narnia Musings [48]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1714795
Comments: 4
Kudos: 47





	survive.

This is survival; blood dripping from your lips, your cheeks aching, your throat screaming, this is survival, my love. It’s ugly and heaving and screaming and dirt under your fingernails.

A run in your nylons.

Come now. Paint it.

Wipe away every trace of it, place teardrops on your lashes, clean your hands until the sink is stained with it all. Make yourself presentable.

This is survival.

Sometimes, the world stands still, choking you. Sometimes, it moves so fast that you can barely breathe, sometimes it just turns as it always has. Despite everything. Despite witches and lions and wardrobes and tables made of crumbling stone, and despite train stations and brothers and a sister; spitting light.  
Despite warm spring mornings and worlds beyond this; stuck still and heaving amongst falling stars and splintering heavens; its shards all stuck in your hands, see?

Can you feel the ache of your hands, the way they’re cut open and bleeding, seeping with all this red, all this iron like the smell that clings to – clung to, she’s _dead_ , my love, she’s _died_ and will never smell like anything ever again – Lucy, and her copper hair, the dryad and the dwarf swaying all about her? Does it hurt, my love? Does it ache? My Queen, how deep are your wounds? can you use your hands again, bleeding and seeping and clawing your way out of this survival burning in your cheeks? The world keeps on turning around you, as it always has, despite it all.

It pays no mind to this iron dripping from you, pooling at your seams. It pays no mind to these voices all pulling at you, peering through your every crack, fumbling at all your scars, peeling all this make up from you until you’re blotched red and rubbed raw; and still.

Like this, they cast you in stone.

Pretty, crying, heaving thing, you hollow Queen, they drape you in flowers and cloth smooth as water, pour water all over you until all the English has seeped from your hair; until it’s left curling and standing on edge.

* * *

Why are you crying?

 _Why_ are you crying?

Why are you screaming?

Why do you claw at us?

What are you doing?

Stand _still_!

My Queen, my love, light of my life, you gentle thing, why don’t you stay where you are and stand _still_?

Let us dress you, and pose you, and drape you all over this crumbling, dying land. We will make you Gentle again, ever smiling just for us. Come on, my love.

Be a friend of Narnia.

Don’t you want to see your siblings again, don’t you yearn for the way your brother would hug you, for his trembling hands?

Don’t you want to remember them as they were, not pale and cold and unmoving, buried in this English soil, in this English way – is this what they wanted?

Is this what you want?

Susan.

Susan.

_Susan!_

Do you want this?

Do you want this world and this England, do you want nylons and lipstick and invitations and petticoats?

Susan, do you want these boys?

These boys with their hands, their mouths all over you, your skin blotched red and black, bruised blue and purple, is this what befits a Queen?

* * *

This is survival. Drag yourself through it.

Raise your head and your world and all your words at the world’s mirrors, at all its eyes on you, at all those hands reaching for you.

You’re a Queen. Use it. Survive your worlds. Survive them all.

And then; live.

Curl your hair and twirl your skirts and dance into the new decade, dance into the new millennium.

Susan, my love, you will stand at the edge of this world and watch it sprint towards all this newness. Susan, my love, you will be married, and she will be lovely, with her arms around you, her lips a mark of red smeared on your cheeks.

Your children; drunk on euphoria as this last millennium ends – they raise their glasses: to the new year, and to you, my love.

To Susan Pevensie, mother and wife, wonderful woman, survivor.

They’ve never known the Queen nestled within you. They’ve never known worlds beyond this one. And you, amidst it all; glowing still.

Isn’t that lovely?

You’ve survived.


End file.
